Re-Claiming Public Space in Bandra Reclamation
Processes of planning and allotment of resources in the city have relied predominantly on the abstract standards and norms given for specific regions — standards that work like thumb-rules, determining the percentage of a particular reservation, based on the population that the reservation has to serve. The Development Plan, and the reservations made therein, are manifestations of planning based on such thumb rules and norms, dictating the distribution and allotment of land as a resource for ‘public’ and ‘private’ uses in the City.
Such planning however fails to take cognisance — commenting here particularly on public spaces — of the varying nature of associations that different groups of people have with public spaces. Such groupings could be economic, based on age or even on gender. Thus, while classical ‘lungs’ such as open greens, maidans, waterfront-promenade developments, public gardens etc. continue to form the predominant definitions of what constitutes ‘public spaces”, the experience of Mumbai seems to provide ample evidence to the production of various “other public spaces” by different groups of people, reflecting their interests and aspirations. In fact, our studies of existing open spaces in the city — Shivaji Park and Oval Maidan — have revealed that the comparative ‘public-ness’ of these open spaces lies in their ability or inability to be able to act as a harbour for various interest groups (and their smaller unplanned public spatial formations). The production of such ‘unplanned’ spaces lies outside the present realm of the planning process. Consequently, the Development Plan — the state’s essential tool for planned distribution of land as a resource — remains devoid of this softer understanding of the aspirations and perceptions of interest groups, and the nature of their associations with and use of public spaces.
Most existing open spaces in the city are either occasional destination points or picnic spots — such as Borivali National Park. Out of what remains for everyday activities, most open spaces are being appropriated for private use, through programmes such as private clubs, or because they are connected to institutions such as schools. This seriously limits the quantum of ‘open spaces as public spaces’, available to the common public for daily use. Newer paradigms of public spaces are being defined through elitist and highly restrictive/exclusive programmes such as shopping malls, club-houses and entertainment parks such as Esselworld. These seem to follow a market logic which serves the interests of the elite consumers and developers, more than of the common public. It is vital for usat this juncture to be able to redefine what constitutes the realm of the ‘public’ and the ‘everyday’. In Mumbai, the notion of “open spaces as public spaces” is being challenged, and is in need of review.
Vasai Virar Sub-Region Comments on Draft DP
In the metropolitan peripheries, development often is synonymous with marginalisation of local communities. Existing policies and plans proposed by state agencies have resulted in severe expropriation of the community-based and natural resources in the Vasai Virar Sub-Region (VVSR), and this project intends to empower these local communities by providing them with bargaining tools for community-led development. This project focusses on areas where acute conflicts have arisen due to developmental pressures, and where resident communities are facing severe marginalisation. It aims towards envisioning short-term (one to three years) and long-term development strategies (five to ten years) in the Vasai Virar Sub-Region. The project methodology includes the formulation of a Local Development Committee (LDC) comprising of various community stakeholders, and institutional and financial mechanisms towards the implementation of the strategy plans Presently, three areas have been identified for community planning interventions:
Vasai Fishing Village (Sector VIII)
Fishing communities have been amongst the earliest settlers in the VVSR. Fishing activities in recent times have been severely affected due to the callous dumping of industrial effluents and urban waste in the creeks and the sea resulting in the loss of ground for fishing. Due to the natural growth of the population these villages have become over populated and face acute infrastructural shortage. Land reclamation in Mumbai, over a long period of time, has resulted into the tidal waves eating up the western coast. Broadly speaking, while deep-sea fishing is a territory controlled by large organizations having sophisticated capacities, fishing activities by indigenous fishermen having weak organizational capacities have been at the mercy of the pressures of urbanisation and threats from the natural environment. In spite of the fishing villages in the VVSR exemplifying all these problems, there is no mention of the fishing villages in the Draft Development Plan for the VVSR (2001–2021). The aim of this project is to initiate a pilot project through the case of Vasai Fishing Village, towards envisioning and strategising local community development.
Kaman Village in the Green Zone (Sector X)
The context for this project is the displacement of cattle sheds from Mumbai and their relocation in the VVSR. The agricultural village of Kaman forms one of the areas where reservations of land use have been made for the relocation of cattle sheds. The disposal of waste from the cattle sheds has affected the land and underground water sources in the region around the Cattle Shed Zone rendering a loss of jobs and livelihood to the farmers and the adivasi (tribal) labour. In the absence of any other form of economic activity, the reservation of land use for the Cattle Shed Zone looms as a severe economic threat for local communities. The process of gentrification, resulting out of the newer programme of the Cattle Sheds, has displaced the adivasi population from their lands and houses. This zone, in the regional context of VVSR, also presents numerous opportunities towards solving the water management and supply problems. In such a context the allocation of the Cattle Shed Zone as a land use is in question, and this project will take the case of Kaman Village for strategising local community development, becoming a bargaining medium for the agricultural and allied community.
Arnala Village in the Plantation Zone (Sector VII)
This project is set in the context of the recent shift of activities from agriculture towards recreation and spiritual tourism in the Plantation Zone, and the promotion of the tourism-based local economies in the Draft Development Plan for the VVSR (2001–2021). Arnala, which is amongst the most populous tourist sites in VVSR, has seen a tremendous growth of resorts and guest houses in the last decade due to the growth of the tourism. Questions have arisen regarding the sustainability of such activities with available water and energy resources and local infrastructure. The local economy, based primarly on agriculture and fishing, has been organised around resident farmers and fishermen, as well as seasonal migrant labour — the tourism economy, however, is based little local participation, and is oriented towards outside business and land interests. While the peri-urban areas have been conceptualised in the Draft Development Plan as tourism and recreation zones, this does not take into account local aspirations or realities. This project will involve the local community in strategising its future development, and suggest ways of strengthening existing local economies in the midst of predatory urbanisation.
Kamathipura-Kumbharwada-Khetwadi (K3G)
In the highly congested inner city wards of the Island City of Mumbai, neighbourhoods are densely populated, with very old, often dilapidated tenements and buildings in which public and common spaces are negligible.The age-old habits of disposing rubbish in ‘common house gullies’ — narrow strips between buildings — creates perennial problems for routine maintenance and overall sanitation in these area, which is the responsibility of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. A number of experiments have been conducted to keep the common house gullies clean, but these have yielded few results due to lack of involvement by local residents and citizens. In view of this situation, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (A, B, C, D and E Ward Offices) approached CRIT to survey and design solutions for collection of garbage in the historic inner-city precincts of Kamathipura, Khetwadi and Kumbharwada, through which more than half of all households will be able to dispose their waste through a new house-to-house system of waste collection and disposal by the municipality. All garbage collection points can be eliminated through this scheme, and the areas can be kept clean throughout the day. This initiative in waste management is coupled with a local urban renewal initiative, in which the existing municipal services and infrastructure is being listed and assessed for uprgradation, estimated investments calculated block and ward-wise, and action plans for implementation have been prepared. Urgent works such as sewerage, storm water drainage, and roads have been assessed within the existing budgetary outlay, and these works are now in progress in Kamathipura, Khetwadi and Kumbharwada.
Akloli, Vajreshwari and Ganeshpuri
The study is set against the background of the extensive development taking place in the three villages of Akloli, Vajreshwari and Ganeshpuri. No longer conventionally “rural areas”, these villages have been transformed by rapidly growing tourism to their popular religious shrines and pilgrimage centres. The influx of devotees from all over the country places an overwhelming burden on already degraded local infrastructure and environments. While the Government is aware of the tourist importance of the region, local groups feel that their rights, problems and opportunities have not been recognised in local and regional plans for tourist development. In June 2004, the Thane District Collectorate, in consultation with local stakeholders, appointed Sri Chandrashekhar Prabhu to make independent observations on the development of Akloli, Vajreshwari and Ganeshpuri. He recommended that CRIT be appointed as a study group to prepare the development plan. The task, as stated by the Government, was “to initiate a bottom-up process of planning” — to articulate the interests and aspirations of local communities and institutions.
The preliminary study was conducted over fifteen days in July 2004, during which CRIT met and interviewed numerous local stake-holders and community leaders, to assess their opinions on the local planning process. Through visual surveys, the study documents the haphazard develoment of local infrastructure, and degradation of the environment of the village communities and religious settlements. The report of the preliminary study strongly suggests the preparation of a Development Plan for Akloli, Vajreshwari and Ganeshpuri. The study further recommends the implementation of certain infrastructure projects to relieve some of the immediate problems faced by the village communities and religious institutions. CRIT is glad to present the report of the preliminary study, and hopes that the Government agencies undertake responsible activities towards an environmentally sustainable development, which provides economic opportunities to all stake-holders.
Tactical City: Tenali Rama and Other Stories of Mumbai’s Urbanism
DOWNLOAD Tactical City: Tenali Rama and Other Stories of Mumbai’s Urbanism by Rupali Gupte (Flash)
This graphic novel is a fictitious history of Mumbai. The thesis sees the city as a playground of TACTICS and further formulates a manifesto of urban practice for architects and planners as one that learns from these tactics and in the process becomes TACTICAL/OPPORTUNISTIC.
The contention of the thesis is that conditions in most third world cities have gone beyond the means of any rational positivist planning. All through (Mumbai’s) political and economic history pervading elite power structures have ensured a lopsided distribution of resources. Through new structural adjustments and sometimes blind inheritance of the tools of the earlier modes of operation both in administrative structures as well as architectural/planning practices, this has carried forward with renewed vigor to the contemporary global context.
Contemporary global cities now face escalating problems of environmental deterioration, burdening of infrastructure, lack of housing, growing informalisation of labour coupled with declining bargaining capacity, and unemployment that go hand in hand with increasing polarization of economy, the spatialised imprints of which one sees in the burgeoning lifestyle stores, malls and gated communities housing the new global elite. With lack of access to wealth and power an increasing section of the city’s population is fighting a loosing battle over resources and urban space and is being rendered invisible. The Nehruvian developmental model has failed to address this subaltern mass and largely so has the Left. The sheer scale and extent of the problems now requires new EYES to see the present conditions and new TOOLS and perhaps a new IMAGINATION to operate in these contexts.
IMAGECITY: Formal and Informal Networks
Mumbai in the Nineties: An Archive of Urban Interventions
Exhibition in ‘Images of Asia’ organised by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2003
This exhibition was an effort towards archiving urban changes in Mumbai over the past decade. Mapping the city to decipher such changes has always been dominated by a reductionism of physical conditions — a methodological bias that focused on an empirical, cartographic agenda. The product of this agenda — the map, and its ally, the census — became trusted informers in conceptualising the city. This conceptualisation is characterised by an incapability to understand changes in the urban condition. Its static nature cannot keep pace with urban change, and it is unable to encompass relations that are not physical.
Archiving efforts have been occupied by periodising events, fixing of benchmarks and establishing types. Such approaches are increasingly difficult to understand where urban environments are characterised by an ever-changing landscape — in a state of constant flux where every point is being challenged in its stability. It is difficult to establish a clear set of important architectural landmarks in the city, markers to map development. Nor can the city be reduced to a set of abstractions representing its various physical parameters — like movement, community structure, everyday practices of living, working and creating — on which the urban structure is based. All seem to merge with each other. In order to analyse patterns of growth, we must move away from conventional modes of mapping the physical fabric and built environment.
To shift the mapping process from an extremely empirical impulse and locate it in a larger dynamic requires a new understanding, a new archive and map of the city. We started our archive by scanning through the most accessible advertisements and brochures made for architecture. These indicated both the physical artefact — the architecture — and its socio-economic location. It indicated aspirations and living standards, with a concern for affordability. We found it necessary to see architecture as a cultural practice, rather than as an isolated artefact. We explored the ways in which the formal architecture of the metropolis was perceived – generated various new kinds of cultural and social forms — luxurious housing complexes with all the necessary and unnecessary amenities, new urban spaces for a new culture of elite consumption. These new cultures overlap with and result in violent clashes and struggle with other urban lifeworlds, such as in the Bombay Riots of 1992–3.
IMAGECITY Curatorial Statement by Gustavo Ribeiro
According to recent estimates by the United Nations, the urban population is, in 2007, expected to reach 50 percent of the world total for the first time in history. By the year 2030, it is expected that 60% of the world population will live in urban areas. Six of the world’s 10 largest megacities in 2030 will be in Asia.
IMAGECITY explores a condition of mediation, through a focus on image and sound narratives with a point of departure in a number of Asian cities. IMAGECITY juxtaposes disparate takes on current urban phenomena, comprising both socio-political and spatial events, as recounted by architects, media artists and film makers, as well as designs for new cities and urban areas – projective urban phenomena. No attempt is made in IMAGECITY to integrate the different statements across the different exhibits, nor even to create a middle ground. In presenting the viewer with a rough cut of polyphonic narratives, disparity and incongruence are central elements in the representational scenario IMAGECITY sets up.
The image is the shared medium connecting the different takes to current urban conditions. But the image is not simply a depiction, a lens, an a posteriori event, independent of urban phenomena. The image as a narrative medium, at the very least contaminates the city; it is insinuating, perhaps insidious. It can shape things on the ground and, as some of the exhibits included here suggest, it can be a political weapon. Through that perspective, IMAGECITY is not only concerned with accounting for architectural and urban design practices. It is also interested in inserting such practices into a broader context of urban events, which can in turn inform those practices.
In representing the intensity, dynamism and disparities of contemporary urban developments in Asia, IMAGECITY uses the concept of formal and informal networks. Formal processes are normally associated with official approval of building activity and urban management, accredited banking and real-estate institutions and planning by central and local government authorities. Informal processes are defined in contrast to building production and urban management, which are not dealt with through official systems and which are not financed through accredited institutions.
Following that approach, informal processes are normally associated with urban phenomena such as shantytowns and street vending. But beyond the above clean-cut definition, informality can be seen as a condition which is not confined to specific urban programmes. It can rather be seen as something, which permeates processes of urban production and reproduction, planned or unplanned, scrutinized by officials or not. In that sense, informal processes incorporate on the one hand, daily interaction and communication between people and use that leads to urban changes. On the other hand, informal processes include planning and urban management practices where official procedures are circumvented. Instead of a sharp division between the formal and informal sectors, we propose to look into hybrid practices, which are permeated by what are defined as formal and informal conditions.